LED Strip Lighting Project–Part4

In part 3 I used about 3 metres of 5050 LED strip in the kitchen, that left me with about 2 metres to create something for the back of the wall mounted HDTV in the living room.

With the length of LED strip I had left I measured and worked out the lengths of four pieces. You can cut these LED strips at the marked intervals.



As this was a waterproof LED strip I was working on, I had to slice back the silicone cover with a Stanley knife to reveal the four golden contact pins. The peg was used to keep the silicone cover held back out of the way. Using the LED cable I bought I had to use maybe 2 inch lengths of this cable that would join the 4 LED strips, this will become clearer in pictures further down the page.



Now I am not going to lie soldering these cables on was allot harder than I imagined, keeping in mind the LED strip is only 8MM wide and the contact pins are very close together, I’ve done quite a bit of soldering before but I am by no means an expert and my shaky hands don’t really help either. Ideally you need a keen eye and a steady hand for the job.

You should tin the ends of each cable first with solder and I found if I put a small blob of solder on each of the four contact pins on the LED strip first, when I came to attach the cable it was much easier. However the biggest problem as the contact pins are so close together, is ensuring that you do not bridge the gap between these contacts with your solder or wires etc.



This is the desired result joining two of the LED strips with our LED cable so we can create a right angle bend behind the TV.



You can buy right angled LED pieces off eBay like the ones shown below, but I can’t see how they would help? As you still need to solder them on?



I think its important to test each join you create before proceeding to the next one.



Here you can get an idea of how it might look when stuck behind the TV, once I had finished soldering I carefully attached some black electrical tape over the ends.



Here you can see the completed loom laid out on the kitchen floor.



Note there are only 3 corners that I joined using the LED cable, the last one top left is just cut off at the end and does not join back round to the start.



As this loom is going behind the TV I opted for an IR remote control and not RF. This is so I can program my Logitech Harmony universal remote control to control the LED lights, I will then not use the original 44 key LED remote control.

The LED controller is also allot smaller than it looks in the pictures on eBay when compared to the top off a bottle of Coke.



OK so now I am starting to attach the LED strip to the back of the TV, I forgot to mention in part 3 that these LED strips all have sticky 3M backing.





Completed installation.



On all these photographs and in the YouTube video there is a light halo, you don’t actually see this in real life and the pictures and video don’t really do it justice to how well it really looks.





Well that’s it for part 4. In part 5 I may cover programming and teaching your Logitech Harmony universal remote control to be able to control the LED lights instead of using the supplied IR remote control. Or I may look at my LED installation in the back garden, but I’ve not done that yet and its raining allot here in the UK so maybe a few weeks away.

Part 5 here.